


the Statistic

by local_doom_void



Series: Murder in the 20th Century [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, Child Murder, Cockney Accent, Dissociation, Existential Horror, Gen, He's like 9 ok, Horror, Murder, Psychological Horror, Tom Riddle is a Cockney and you can fight me, Young Tom Riddle, being dead sucks, i will die on this hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: Tom Riddle was never going to be more than just another statistic.





	the Statistic

Tom Marvolo Riddle, age 9, was feeling hungry. This state of affairs was somewhat normal for him, but it was a compressing, oppressive sort of normality, and Tom wished it would go away. It would be nice, the black-haired boy thought, if one day he’d only need to breathe to keep on living. Food? Sleep? Not necessary. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Maybe, if he stretched himself enough, it would indeed one day be possible. Tom often thought of the future in this way, despite his own sense of disbelief in it. It was in fact that sense of disbelief that convinced the boy to continue forcing himself to think about it. Something in him didn’t believe that he would live to become an adult, and Tom knew very intimately the power of belief in changing the world around him. If he could move toys without even touching them, merely by thinking about it really hard - if he could force certain weak-willed adults to do what he wanted simply by staring at them very, very hard and _twisting_ until his blood pounded in his ears - who was to say that his own inability to believe in his own life wouldn’t lead him to die early? Tom knew all about death, unlike a lot of the children he had met, and he didn’t want to die.

So he forced himself, somewhat often, to imagine his future self. His grown-up self. Would he be tall? Tom wanted to be tall, so that he could look down on people. He wanted to have nice clothing - good suits, like the ones some of the wealthier orphanage donors wore. He would still be powerful - he would have so many things he could do, powers and miracles and devil’s tricks, far more than what Tom could do right now. He would be able to control _anyone_ he wanted, not just the weak adults and the children. He’d have food, and a safe place to sleep - or else he wouldn’t need food or sleep, and that would be nice, too. 

He’d have a lot of books.

Tom stepped out of the cold, empty dining room and into the main hallway. The orphanage was dingier than usual today, as if reflecting the cold gray color of the clouds blanketing the sky outside. Tom stopped and stood still for a moment, to resolutely hate everything about the place, and then continued on. He stuffed himself into his coat, taking a spare scarf to wrap around his neck after he assured himself that nobody was looking. It was made of a dark red-brown wool - not interesting, but warm enough.

London was full of loud and obnoxious people, as always. Tom wasn’t supposed to be out, of course - the orphanage had _rules_ about that. But Tom had never seen the point in following rules that would have forced him to accept an empty belly and the brain-numbing boredom that was idleness. Sometimes he felt the matron almost wanted him to lose it and hurt the orphans, if only so she could finally have the excuse to be rid of him. Maybe she would even beat him to death with that shovel, like she’d threatened to do when he was 5.

Some day he would be able to turn right around and do the same thing to her, Tom promised himself.

He made his way carefully into the busier, smoggy worker’s district, set himself up on a street corner that he had used before. There was a rubbish-filled alley to his back, an emptier one about a block away, and a bustling warehouse two blocks away in the other direction. Tom leaned against the corner of an old, gray brick building, the better to duck away down his alley quickly if any bobbies came along. They didn’t like panhandling orphans, as Tom had learned from a particularly thrilling chase when he was 7 - nor did they like pickpockets, which he also sometimes indulged in with help from his powers. Needless to say, Tom didn’t like bobbies much.

His first success was a letter run across the district, to an entirely different warehouse, for tuppence. Then, helping a harried-looking worker in the same compound to re-collect the scattered nails from a broken crate, and when he finished (with some help from his powers), the gray-bearded, ragged man pressed a whole shilling into Tom’s palm and blustered at him until he scampered away. Gleeful, Tom stuck his hand into his coat pocket and rubbed the coin between his fingers as he ran back to his chosen lamp-post. A rather well-dressed fop stuck out like a shiny coin in the gravel, but he was surrounded by a few too many people for Tom to feel confident enough to approach and grope about in pockets. That was a pity - along with his shilling, the returns from the “gentleman’s” purse would be all that Tom needed to afford something to eat from a shop. It would have been one of the easiest meals he’d ever had.

Back at the lamp-post, Tom examined his boots and rubbed off some of the dust and dirt with his coat sleeve’s hem. Then he frowned down at the long, feather-like scuff mark on his right shoe’s toe, but he knew from experience that no amount of scrubbing would remove that one. He left it alone.

A few solicitations were made, but the adults turned them all down. Tom scowled at their backs as they retreated, baring his teeth with curled lips. Tom knew that his expression when he bared his teeth was ‘bestial’ - or at least, that’s what the matron had said to that priest. Tom didn’t know why that was, but he enjoyed it, because it could make adults flinch. These adults weren’t seeing it, though, and Tom hated that.

“You there,” said a cold voice. “Boy.”

Tom turned, hiding his teeth just in case it was a worker who wanted to give him a few coins, preparing to run just in case it was a bobby who wanted to drag him to the yard. A tall man stood there, black and shiny hair pulled back into a tight, short ponytail. He wore a gray tweed suit with patches at the elbows, his face was sallow, and his eyes were cold and black.

Tom rebalanced himself, making sure he was ready to move if he needed to. “Whaddaya want?” he asked.

“You are running errands for coin, then?” the man drawled. A strange flicker of amusement darted across the sharp angles of his face. It was only there for a moment, but Tom saw it, of course, and he fought his urge to bare his teeth again.

“Yes,” Tom said. “D’you want one?” He forced his face to slide into an excited, innocent look that made his gray eyes sparkle.

The man looked him up and down, slowly, as if drawn into a nod by some kind of fishing line attached to his hooked nose. “Are you capable of being observant, boy?”

“Of course,” Tom scoffed, drawing himself up to his full height. “I ain’t a snitch neither,” he added - only criminals ever asked Tom if he could notice things, and Tom wasn’t a fool who couldn’t notice patterns.

“Oh no, we can’t have that, now can we?” the man murmured softly. Tom wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it - he’d always had good hearing, and sometimes he heard things people didn’t actually mean for him to hear. He didn’t comment, anyway.

The man produced a briefcase from his side - Tom blinked at it shrewdly. It was there - but how had he not noticed it until this moment? The man was talking again, though, so Tom paid attention. “This case,” the man said lowly, “must be watched until I return. You won’t look inside. I will pay you five pounds for doing this - do we have a deal?”

Tom’s head spun. Five whole pounds! Whatever was in that case must have been very illegal, he thought - but it was _five whole pounds_! He could buy _more_ than one meal with that amount of money, not to even mention the shilling and tuppence he’d already managed to acquire - oh, he would be _rich_.

“You got it, mister,” he said, unable to keep the grin off of his face as he bounced up and down on his heels. The man’s arm twitched violently, and Tom hopped backwards, wiping off his grin in favor of looking up at the man warily.

“... Not so exuberant,” the man finally said, voice low and cold. “Follow me.”

Tom followed the man, who led him to a sort of residential side street of from the worker’s district - and from there, to an alley. It didn’t go anywhere, ending in a brick wall that must be part of some building on the other side. Tom looked around vaguely, but saw nothing interesting. There were crates - there was a rubbish bin near the front - there were a few scraggly bits of yellowed grass pushing up from the dirt near the back.

The man gestured into the alley. “After you, young lord,” he said, his voice dark with amusement once again. That wasn’t a funny joke, Tom thought, but the thought of five pounds had him saying nothing and trotting in anyway.

“How long’re you gonna be?” he asked, turning around, expecting to see the man placing the briefcase somewhere, maybe obscuring it.

Instead, the man lunged forwards, moving just as Tom was turning. Tom couldn’t pivot fast enough - a large, black-gloved hand grabbed his arm and squeezed hard, the fingertips digging into Tom’s flesh even through his coat. The boy let out a hissing shriek of fury, tugging away even as the man took one, two, three quick, long strides into the alley, pulling Tom along with him.

“Lemme go!” Tom yelled, letting a hiss flee his lips. He tried to bare his teeth in rage, but he felt scared, too, though he ignored that. He couldn’t believe that he had been so stupid, to let this adult close enough to grab him so easily. All for what - food? Vulnerability wasn’t worth the siren call of bread. Tom would rather starve. He channelled his panic into anger, dug his heels into the ground, and bared his teeth for real this time. The man swung Tom around, whipping something out of his sleeve - a stick? - before he pointed it at Tom’s chest.

“What - ” are you doin’, Tom tried to say. The man spoke over him. 

“ _Avada Kedavra_.”

There was a vibrant green light.

Tom fell backwards, his arm finally released. His fall was strangely light and carefree, and it seemed to Tom as if it were taking far longer than it should have - as if time had slowed him down. He felt, oddly enough, like laughing. He didn’t - he had more self-control than that, and Tom _didn’t_ laugh, anyway - but he simply felt so light and pleasant, and he thought he could taste the smell of ocean salt and sun-bleached rocks in his mouth. But he was in London - that didn’t make any sense -

He was lying on the dusty ground of the alley, his neck twisted at an awkward angle and the gnawing hunger gone from his stomach. He couldn’t remember landing at all.

In a moment, Tom remembered the man, and he quickly shoved himself upright, frantically blinking the static from his vision. The hook-nosed man was looking down at him oddly, his face frozen in place, arms limp at his sides. Tom might have said that he was distant - Ma’am Cole got that look when she drank from her poison bottles.

What was that for?! Tom cried. What’d you do?

The man said nothing - didn’t even make a sign that he had heard Tom. His eyes were fixed, not on Tom’s eyes or face, but somewhere on his chest. Tom looked down and brushed his hands over the front of his coat. He didn’t see anything there.

You’re a right buggerin’ arsehole, Tom spat. He scooted a bit farther away, just in case the man thought to grab him again. I’m gonna tell all the other errand-runners that you’re shite. He wouldn’t actually tell them, of course - they didn’t like him, he didn’t like them, and neither wanted to talk to the other. But the man didn’t know that.

Still the man said nothing. As Tom glared, slowly the man’s shoulders slumped, and he closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face.

‘Ey! Tom shouted. I’m talkin’ to you!

The man turned, tucking the weird stick back into his sleeve. He started to walk out of the alley without even a glance, and Tom couldn’t take it anymore, so he leapt to his feet and raced after him.

‘Ey! he called. You can’t just ignore me like that! You promised you’d gimme five pounds, if you don’t I’ll go find a bobby and I’ll tell ‘im you was -

He had almost caught up to the man when he slammed into something.

Ow! Tom cried, crouching down on the ground as he frantically patted at his nose. It didn’t actually hurt - he had just cried out because he was surprised. But usually running into something that hard would have hurt - why hadn’t it?

The man was moving quickly down the street, ignoring everything that Tom yelled after him. Hissing, Tom tried to lean out, looking to see if there were any bobbies around. As he did he felt a curious pressure, like he was leaning against a - a curtain? Tom didn’t know a good word for what he was feeling. It was slightly slippery, and it felt as though he were deforming it by pressing on it, but there was nothing there. Bewildered, he reached out another hand. In midair, nothing touching him, he met resistance - he could push a bit, but it got steadily more and more difficult to do, until he couldn’t push farther than a certain depth. That certain depth wasn’t more than a foot or so past the entrance to alleyway.

‘Ello? Tom tried, but nobody was around that he could see, and he couldn’t hear anyone respond. Now that the hook-nosed man was out of sight, he was beginning to calm down from his outrage, and the invisible barrier seemed more pressing. He pushed against it a few more times, growing more and more worried when not even his powers seemed to be able to do anything.

With a huff he turned around, expecting that maybe he could figure out a way to climb over the wall on the other end - and then he stopped.

There was a small figure lying in the alley.

It was tiny, like a child Tom’s size. It was wearing a threadbare, patched gray coat, and faded black pants, and boots. It had black hair. There was a red-brown wool scarf looped casually around its neck.

Tom shook his head and rubbed his eyes furiously. When he looked again, the little figure was still there.

It’s nothin’, he hissed to himself as he slowly walked over. Yet he couldn’t stop feeling a dread that roiled into his very core, tasting of medicine down the wrong pipe. His stomach felt so full of holes that it had lost its bottom entirely - his insides were dropping out around his feet. He was choking. He wanted nothing more than to run away and leave, but -

Everything looked even more familiar up close. The boots had a scuff mark on one toe. The coat had three yellowish patches on the arm. The scarf was a bit too big because it was made for an adult. There was a little chip in the hem of the coat. Tom knew all the details of the individual scuffs and patches of his own coat perfectly, since it was the only way to tell one identical coat from the next when they were all hanging up on the coat-rack. It was his coat. His coat was on the - the person, the copy of him, lying on the ground.

Tom looked, and he was lying on the ground in front of himself, head turned and pressed awkwardly to the ground so that he couldn’t see his own face. He was still. His hair was all messed up and his neck was curled awkwardly. Why was he lying like that? Why was he standing up and seeing himself lying down, for that matter? Tom had never seen himself from this angle - he’d never have achieved it without a mirror.

Cautiously, Tom stepped over his own legs and walked around until -

His eyes were open. They were glazed over and he was just staring at nothing.

Wake up, Tom croaked out. He slapped himself lightly on his cheek, and then when he didn’t really feel the sting, he did it again, harder. But he still didn’t feel anything hurting. Wake up, he repeated. Wake up, wake up!

He didn’t move from the ground. Hitting himself clearly wasn’t working. Tom knelt down and tried to grab at his own shoulder. He wanted to shake himself awake, it didn’t even matter, he _knew _he could do it. He could do anything he wanted to, he could do _anything he wanted to_ and he wanted to wake up _right now___.

His hands went into his own shoulder, and for a long time after that, there was only the panic.

  


Darkness fell, and saw Tom sitting in the middle of the alley, knees curled up to chest as he rocked back and forth in an attempt to calm himself down. He had been here all day, but he wasn’t cold, and he still didn’t feel hungry, and he wasn’t tired at all despite expending so much energy screaming. Now he was merely crying, having burst into tears long ago despite all his promises to himself that he’d never cry again. Then again, it wasn’t really crying, because there were no tears, and he hadn’t felt any. But his chest kept seizing up, and he had been making noises that sounded like crying.

At least, he felt he had been making noises. But then again, the man with the hooked nose hadn’t even seemed to notice. He hadn’t even seemed to _see_ him.

Tom’s back was to his body - his _still, cold, dead body_.

Why was he dead?! Tom wanted to scream. How was this fair? It wasn’t fair! How was Tom supposed to know - the man hadn’t even had a knife or _anything_. It was just a _stick_. How could green light just - just make him _die_?

He whimpered, and hated that noise much more than the crying. But maybe it didn’t matter, if he was dead and nobody could hear him. It wasn’t like anything - like it mattered anymore. Tom’s mind reeled in horror at the thought as it traitorously snuck through his consciousness, but there it was.

He was dead. Nothing mattered anymore.

He’d been right. He’d died after all. He’d never grow up now. He’d never be able to learn how to use his powers to do all the things he’d wanted to figure out how to do. He’d never be able to have a library of books that was all _his_. He’d never be able to wear nice clothes.

He’d never - he’d never -

Tom wrapped his insubstantial arms around his insubstantial body and wished he could squeeze all the emotions out of his chest, so that he was just empty. It was about the same as being dead, wasn’t it?

  


Tom tried very hard to go to sleep. He couldn’t feel the hardness of the ground beneath him, really, and he wasn’t cold, so he thought maybe it would have been easy. But the sick dread still stole over him, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how his real body was lying on the ground mere feet away, unmoving, growing colder and more rigid by the second. He could imagine it so perfectly - his tendons tightening up, his skin drying up and turning leathery, cracking until his congealed blood fell out and showed his bones. It made him feel sick, and soon the renewed panic drove him to his feet. He didn’t look at himself again, though.

Nobody came looking for him. Not even when morning arrived - still nobody had come. Tom felt a shuddering something _crack_ inside of him when he realized this, like a poker stuck into his ribs. He didn’t know why - he had _known_ that nobody cared about him. He was just some poor, pitiful orphan, alone and unloved and unwanted - and not even a sympathetic, waifish orphan like the masses loved to imagine. He had known for a long time that he was too sharp, too smart, too angry, too scary and powerful and unnerving and unnatural for them. People just didn’t like him.

But it was a little different seeing it all laid out so neatly before him in such an obvious demonstration.

They probably weren’t even looking for him.

They were probably _happy_.

The poker dug deeper into his ribs. Tom wanted nothing more than to destroy everything around him, to scream and scream until somebody heard, until somebody was scared - but he knew he couldn’t. In the end he curled up in the same place in the center of the alley, face buried in his knees, arms wrapped around his own waist. He rocked back and forth - back and forth - and tried to lose himself in the movement of it all.

It didn’t work, and eventually he started crying again.

Nobody came looking for him that day, either, so Tom didn’t stop crying. He kept crying, and rocking, and trying desperately not to think about anything, for as long as possible - but everything was tainted, everything made him sick. Even his happiest memories of consciously using his powers - to make lights, to feel warmer, to steal toys and food from the other orphans - all of those were tainted, because he knew he’d never be able to do anything like that ever again. He’d never know what exactly he could do - he’d never know _why_ he was special. He’d never know if he could be something _more_ than what he was.

But even when he realized that his every memory of being alive was hurting him more than the attempt at comfort, he couldn’t make himself stop thinking. His thoughts raced - he remembered things he thought he never would, and his mind helpfully whispered, _you’ll never do this again_.

No, Tom tried to say. It would probably be a whimper if he were alive. I’ll get to do it again. I will. I will.

What a liar he was.

The emotional agony was finally broken by the sound of footsteps down the alley. Tom looked up in shock and saw a bobby standing there, just inside of the mouth of the alley. He had a black beard, and a big thick wool coat on, and for a glorious moment Tom forgot everything about being dead. His fingers itched to feel that coat for himself, maybe to grab something nice from inside one of the man’s deep, deep pockets. He popped upright. Mister, mister! he called.

The man didn’t even look at him.

Tom’s entire chest caved in, and he struggled to breath - but he wasn’t even breathing, was his? His chest was only seizing up in a feeble imitation of breath. He’d always promised himself that he’d never, _ever lose himself like this, but -_

But.

He yelled and yelled and screamed, sometimes words but mostly nonsense, and he ran out and tried to grab the policemand, or hit him, or _something_. Nothing happened. Tom’s hands went right through him. But the man had noticed Tom - his body - and he cried out and went down to pick it up. It was _stiff_ , and Tom stared at his body’s fingers, blue and grayish now at the tips. His lips were just the same, and his face was so pale it was almost white, and his eyes looked like they had sunken in, and -

I’m right ‘ere!! Tom screamed, even as the policeman was making the most half-hearted of attempts to find Tom’s pulse. I’m ‘ere, I’m ‘ere! That ain’t me, that’s a stupid body, I’m _‘ere_!! LOOK AT ME!

The man was walking away. He hadn’t even looked - that wasn’t _okay_ -

Tom sprinted after him. Look behind you! he shrieked. I’m right behind you! I ain’t dead, I ain’t, I ain’t _gone_ , I’m -

He slammed into the weird barrier again, and when he had recovered, the policeman was gone.

  


Tom could not sleep, no matter how hard he tried. Maybe it was because he was dead. He had always hated having to go to sleep, fearing the vulnerability of being insensate, but now that it was unreachable Tom wanted nothing more than to reach inside of himself and flip the switch that would allow him to finally just stop _thinking_.

He was thinking too much, and he couldn’t stop. Tom hadn’t thought he’d ever reach this point, either, but as he paced the length of the alley like a caged animal he wished he could stop thinking. Tom had never stopped thinking before, not in his entire life. He couldn’t remember a time when his brain hadn’t pulled together memories and facts and stitched them into neat little real-time insights into the nature of reality and what was going on around him. Even when he sat alone and stared at a wall, he was still thinking.

But before, he could _do_ things with his thoughts after he had them. Now he was left with only shreds of action - he could do nothing to make the thoughts stop, but he could do nothing with him. He took to babbling aloud instead, letting his stream of consciousness wash out through his mouth. It wasn’t real speech, of course - Tom knew that by now. But ‘voicing’ his thoughts felt almost as if he were talking at somebody, instead of being alone. It made things a bit more bearable.

One day he saw a pair of people talking in the street outside, and without even thinking he ran up to the entrance as far as he could go and started to shout and scream at them.

They didn’t hear him.

  


The alley was exactly twenty and a half paces long, and six paces wide. The floor of it was old and uneven cobblestone near the entrance, degrading quickly to only sparse bricks lodged in the dirt, and from there to no bricks at all. The dirt itself was hard-packed, pale brown in color, and dusty. It would create all sorts of mud when it was wet, and the moisture collected easily into disgusting mud-water puddles in the natural depressions in the dirt near the center of the alley. The three decaying crates along the side of the alley were moldy and mildewed, their wooden parts long since rotten and splinted to uselessness. The nails, what few remained, were red with rust, and often leaned out of their original positions at dangerous angles as the wood softened around them. There was a rubbish bin, a degraded tinmetal thing, that sat on the other side of the alley from the crates, if nearer the front. It did not have a lid. Only rarely was anything in it. At the back of the alley, small sickly green tufts of grasses poked up through the dirt, not quite so hard-packed so far from the entrance. The wall at the back of the alley was plaster stucco, unpainted, but dirtied to gray by exposure nevertheless. The two walls of the buildings on either side were brick, one a bit brighter red than the other, which was more desaturated and maroon. There were windows, but they were only higher up, and were generally kept closed so that nothing could be perceived of the goings-on indoors.

Sometimes a wizened man with leathered skin would come and riffle through the bin. Sometimes a stout woman would drag the rubbish bin away and then return it, emptied. Nothing else happened - nothing else changed.

  


One day, when there was snow on the ground and Tom was feeling more wretched than usual, he had an epiphany. He was dead, yes - of course that was true, much as Tom still felt the sting in his eyes and chest when he thought the thought. But he wasn’t gone from the world - he was clearly still here, in the alley where he had died. He wasn’t in Heaven or Hell or Limbo or wherever else you were supposed to end up, according to those stupid priests. So what was he, then? He must be a ghost.

Ghosts were supposed to be able to go through walls, weren’t they?

Suddenly he didn’t feel quite so wretched. Gasping, Tom leapt up from his seat in a snowbank and raced frantically to the back of the alley, holding his hands out towards the stucco’d wall. Would he be able to get out? Would he be able to _move_ again? Being dead might not be so bad if he could go places - he could go _anywhere_ , see _anything_! Nobody could keep him out of _anywhere_! It would be incredible, it would be _almost_ as good as having his own library. Good things just weren’t happening after Tom had died - he’d take anything he could get.

He pressed his hands to the stucco and pushed with all his might. His hands sunk easily into the matter - yes, Tom thought, _yes_.

But soon enough they stopped sinking so easily. Tom felt the pressure building in front of him, that same feeling that he always felt when he pressed against the empty air of the alley entrance, and he stopped being able to move his hands forwards at all when the stucco was about up to his wrists.

No, he gasped. No.

Punching had no effect - trying other spots on the wall had no effect. Tom flung himself at the two brick walls with a ferocity he hadn’t thought himself capable of, but the same unforgiving pressure stopped him there, too.

Some time later, the snow had gone completely, and Tom had pressed every wall he could reach in every possible place he could reach. There was nothing - he was still trapped here.

As he stared dully around him, feeling even deader than usual, he noticed a little sprig of bright, weedy flowers waving at him from the back of the alley.

Tom settled down to watch the flowers. They moved sometimes, in the small and inconsequential breezes that managed to make their way into the alley, and that made them the most interesting thing he could possibly occupy himself with, in Tom’s opinion. He should know, he thought - he was the unassailable _expert_ on this little alleyway somewhere in east London.

He had never really watched flowers before with any detail. Tom couldn’t remember how he’d felt about them while he was alive. He thought he hadn’t really thought anything of them, most likely. They hadn’t had anything interesting enough about them to distract him from his much more complicated thoughts, and he had always been more concerned with getting food, and protecting himself from the other orphans and the adults at the orphanage, and trying to find books to read. He hadn’t had the time for flowers, back then.

  


The flowers were wonderful.

Tom finally, finally felt some of his furious, frantic thoughts begin to melt away as he watched the flowers. True, they sometimes didn’t move for days. But they were alive, and they were growing. As time passed, Tom could see the progression, he could see the stems growing longer and the flower petals deepening in color. He could see the nubs of fresh leaves forming, growing, unfurling and exploding out into new green appendages for the stem. He could see how those leaves, not getting enough sunlight, were quietly drooping, turning brown, rotting off the very stem that should have sustained them. Tom liked that - he liked the ruthless pragmatism of it. He had wished that he could cut off his own extraneous and useless parts sometimes, too.

The changing of the flowers distracted Tom from his thoughts, and slowly they slid away. His frantic mind shifted from a nearly singing hysteria to a softer, calmer, almost soothing wash of thoughts that was comprised mostly of observations. There’s a new flower bud on that stem. That leaf is starting to get brown. That flower is going to close early if the rain doesn’t stop. Oh, ants - that must be how the flower gets its pollen out of here.

He wished he could turn into a grain of pollen and be carried off by ants, too.

Tom watched the flowers for a very long time. But finally the weather began to turn colder again, and the flowers began to die completely. Even the stems withered up and browned, as the frosts began to hit in the morning, and the little smattering of plants that Tom was watching vanished beneath the chill of winter.

… Had it really been a year?

It had to have been. But something was wrong with Tom’s emotions, because he couldn’t bring himself to care very much. He was upset, but he wasn’t, all at once. He didn’t feel angry - he just felt a little more dead inside, a little more empty and blank. He fake-cried for a little bit, barely any time at all, as the sky darkened into night and snow began to fall on him and the alley. The large flakes drifted right through Tom’s outstretched arm, and he wished that he could feel anything, anything at all.

He watched the snow. It glinted sometimes, in the light coming from the windows over the alley, or in the refracted light of a distant lamp-post down the street. Tom didn’t know who lived in those buildings - he’d never seen them. The flakes, falling almost as silently as him, made him think about a story he had read once. It had been about a girl who had been lost outside in a snowstorm. She had burned up all her matches to stay warm, but when the matches ran out, she had frozen, and her dead grandmother had taken her to Heaven.

He felt a little like the match girl now, Tom thought, staring up at the snow-filled sky. Just as empty. He was done with being here - he wanted to go. His mother had died when he was born, that was why he was in the orphanage. Tom had always tried not to think about her very much - he was angry that she had left him alone. But he hadn’t ever really imagined what she had been like, and he found himself doing that now. Was she a ghost, like him, stuck in the place she’d died? If she was, Tom suddenly realized, then she’d _seen_ him growing up. She’d _been_ there. He shuddered - suddenly he didn’t want to know. No, she must be in Heaven, he told himself. He wished she could come and take him away from this stupid, lonely alleyway, just like the match girl’s grandmother had taken her away.

The snow kept falling.

  


Tom pressed himself against the barrier at the alley entrance, leaning into it so that it supported his whole - well, ‘weight’. This angle allowed him to look out onto the street, just a bit, and he could watch living people. Not that it was very interesting - nobody tended to stand around for hours having conversation outside of an alley, after all. But Tom caught snippets of conversation, as people passed - there were more people around these days - and he enjoyed those snippets, as incomprehensible as they could be. The sound of other voices was calming to his thoughts. It allowed him not to think as much, and Tom rather liked it when he didn’t think as much.

  


During one of those conversations, there was a pause, and Tom noticed that he wasn’t even pretending to breath anymore.

Huh.

  


The living people were _building_ something outside his alley.

It had been - years, probably, Tom thought. He tried not to think about time anymore. Instead he occupied himself most of the time by pacing through the alley, a perfected stereoscopic motion that allowed him not to even think about his motions, while still moving around. Sometimes Tom lost himself while he paced, mind taken up only with the step, step, turn. He didn’t so much prefer that, as it was just as good as anything else he could have occupied himself with.

Step. Step. Turn.

But now, his step-step-turn was being interrupted, because the living people were _building_ something. It was just outside of his alley - there were bright yellow construction machines, some of them completely unfamiliar to Tom. The living people wore plastic yellow and white hats, and shouted rather a lot. Maybe they couldn’t hear over the noise of the machines.

It was so _interesting_ , and Tom found himself pressed up against the barrier more often than not, watching in blank rapture as the machines moved and dug and screeched. So many new sounds and sights. He felt as if he were going to faint with the excitement of it all, even as his emotions laid dull and still inside of his chest. Tom was used to that, though - Tom knew he didn’t feel anything.

Sometimes the men working on the construction even came _into_ the alley. They would set down a blanket and eat a picnic lunch. Tom thought he might actually understand love, now, for he was sure that he loved this the most of all. He would sit down at the edge of the blanket, watch the men eat and listen to them talk and chatter about all sorts of _alive_ things, and pretend that he was really there, listening to everything, that they knew he was there and they were recounting their stories for _his_ benefit.

They weren’t. Obviously. But Tom liked to pretend. He thought he’d earned it, what with being dead for so long. All he wanted was to hear them talk - that wasn’t unfair, right?

Of course, eventually the construction ended, and the men left, taking their picnic blankets and their conversation with them. Tom stood at the entrance of the alley for a while, and stared out at the newly-made street, trying to feel like nothing again.

  


Tom had always worried about being dead, when he was alive. He’d worried that there would be nothing. He’d thought he would be asleep forever, never able to wake up ever again, and he’d hated and feared that thought. Heaven, Hell - they didn’t seem real, when all Tom could imagine was pure nothingness.

This was what death really was, though. It was still nothingness. But it was worse than being asleep. It was staring in the face of eternity - it was the face of boredom and emotional deadening, but still being aware for all of it.

Tom wished he could go to sleep and never wake up. That would have been a nicer death, he thought.

  


He took to standing against one of the walls instead of pacing. It was less to think about.

  


The dirt was a slightly different shade of brown this year. Tom didn’t wonder why.

  


Tom was dead, and death was nothing. Therefore, he was nothing.

It wasn’t so bad. The brick wall across from him never changed. Tom didn’t want it to change - that might be unpleasant, after all.

  


He imagined he was part of the alley - part of the dirt, part of the brick walls, part of the rubbish and the rotten crates, now reduced after decades to mere piles of splinter and mulch and a few nails. Just like the alley, he didn’t change. Nobody noticed him - he was part of the furniture, part of the scenery. Not alive. He couldn’t participate in the drama of the living, after all, when he was dead, so better to be silent and still. Better to stare at the wall, or the ground, and think nothingness to himself. He hadn’t spoken in a long time. He sort of forgot what speaking was like.

He knew his name was Tom, but did that matter? Time passed. Nothing changed. Nobody saw him. He wasn’t even real, was he?

Deep in his chest, there was a dull ache. He ignored it until it went away.

He would just stay like this, he thought vaguely. It would be this, for the rest of forever, as he stared at the face of eternity. Him, and the alley, and the unceasing boredom humming in his ears and deadening his thoughts and emotions.

Just nothing.

Forever.

**Author's Note:**

> This intended to be readable as a stand-alone piece. Therefore, if you were satisfied with this ending - whether that's because you think Tom deserved what he got, or because you're fine with this status quo where the wizarding wars never broke out, or some other reason - then you can feel free to stop now.
> 
> On the other hand... if you feel upset, or sad, or if you wish Tom could have had someone to help him not become Voldemort in some way that wasn't murder, or if you believe that he didn't, in fact, deserve this... then please read on to the next part of the series, once that is posted. I think you'll find it a bit more uplifting.


End file.
